The Kyoto Protocol is to be extended another 5 years. Tim Groser has acknowledged to me in the past he accepts there are problems with the way agricultural emissions are calculated and the problems associated with this and the implications of this for NZ. Yet in Durban The EU and a few other developed countries have signed up to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, that ends in 2013. Whethre these few rich developed countries include NZ I don’t know. If it does he has sold us down the river agreeing to bind NZ to legally binding emission reductions including livestock emissions and using these flawed calculations. In return for us accepting these binding targets the big emitters, USA China and India don’t have to do anything until 2020.
Talk about shoot yourself in the foot. Groser is supposed to be negotiating for NZ not against us.
Details are still skethchy and I hope I have got this wrong but if what I have read is true I can’t think of a worse outcome for NZ and I can’t think why Groser would do this to NZ.
With our emissions increasing and forestry offsetting starting in 2013 I can see this costing us all a lot of money. The ETS is bad enough but at least most of that money stays in NZ. This deal Groser may have agreed to will see money going from the hands of a NZer to overseas interests.
With a government not actually formed yet is it appropriate for Groser who is effectively only acting for a caretaker government to sign away NZ’s future prosperity with a deal that no one in NZ has given him authority to do?
Australia won’t accept obligations under a Kyoto second commitment period unless and until an all-country agreement is negotiated (2015 at the earliest).
“As part of the wash-up from Durban, Australia will not take on a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol until the new agreement has been finalised.” http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/durban-to-deliver-on-climate-pact/story-fn59niix-1226219439652.
One presumes that New Zealand will take a similar position – so that all financial liabilities expire at the end of next year. At the very least, we should be able to avoid liabilities if we cant negotiate forestry off-setting and a new GWP for methane.
New Zealand has not yet signed up to the Kyoto extension. A joint press release from Smith and Groser says: ” We will need to make a decision in coming months whether to join Europe in inscribing our next set of international commitments within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol or to join all the developing countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and others, in making those commitments under the alternative transitional arrangements described in different texts. It is not a matter of whether we make commitments – New Zealand will – but where they are made and how ambitious we should be.”
The release also said the Durban agreement improves the rules in the treatment of land use and forestry. Presumably this means that offsetting is now going to be allowed. I know this was an area NZ was pushing.
If so it is potentially bad news for hill country sheep and beef farming. It will allow dairy conversions to recommence on the Volcanic Plateau. I have no problem with this. Now that stock health problems have been solved for this land it is ridiculous that it is locked up growing low value pines and not high value food. But it is just as criminal to stop hill country sheep and beef farms from producing quality food and instead grow pine trees that very possibly may never be harvested.
Sounds like we still have a chance to get NZ out of Kyoto and to get something done about biological emissions. The Govt is bending over backwards for the forestry people and doing nothing but shaft agriculture. I think that may have something to do with forestry lobby groups doing a good job and dairy and beef industry organisations like Dairy NZ and B & L and even Fonterra doing a pretty poor job on behaif of their farmers. they have cosied up to the Govt on this one.